Every Last Child Deserves the Opportunity to Learn to Read

Across the world, millions of children leave school without learning to properly read and write. Angelita, age 9, was at risk of becoming one such child. Although she was enrolled in a primary school in her rural Indonesian village, Angelita was a struggling student.

If a young child gap struggles with reading, they risk falling behind and may never catch up. In fact, if children don’t get the help they need to learn to read, then the gaps between struggling and strong readers widens and worsen as they grow.

As a young girl growing up in a place that grapples with widespread poverty and political instability, Angelita is one of 575 million girls who live in countries characterized by discrimination against girls.1 As reported in Save the Children’s 2018 End of Childhood Report, girls are more likely than boys to never set foot in a classroom. At last estimate, some 15 million girls of primary school age would never get the chance to learn to read or write in primary school. And for those girls who are enrolled in school, the opportunity to develop as a reader is not guaranteed. In fact, only 94% of girls 15 and older are literate.

Angelita attends a Save the Children ‘reading camp’, a program that aims to boost literacy rates, at a Save the Children-funded model primary school in West Sumba, Indonesia.

Save the Children has worked in Indonesia for more than three decades. Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, enrollment for girls in sponsorship schools rose by nearly 5% over 2015.

With your support, we are working to give children in Indonesia and around the world early learning opportunities at home and in school.

For just over a year now, 9-year-old Angelita has been taking part in a Save the Children ‘reading camp’ – a vital afterschool program that boosts the literacy of 7 through 9-year-olds and gives them the skills to succeed, even when learning in overburdened school systems.

“Personally, I think children here lacked many things before Save the Children came,” says Angelita’s mother Maria. “Now, we can see our children have had significant improvements in their education. They’re more keen on going to school.”

To learn more about Save the Children’s work to support child literacy around the world, visit our website.